Donal Óg

For more of my random posts on random topics (PSAs, Ads, music, miscellany), click HERE:

Donal Óg

lyrics and music by… anonymous
performed by various

Irish (Gaeilge

Dhónaill óig, má théir thar farraige,
Tabhair mé fhéin leat ‘s ná déan do dhearmad.
Beidh agat férín lá aonaigh ‘s margaidh,
Gus iníon rí Gréige mar chéile leapan agat.

Gheall tú dhomsa ach rinne tú bréag liom,
Go mbeithfeá romham ag cró na gcaorach.
Lig mé fead ort is dhá chéad béiceach,
Ach ní bhfuair mé aon fhreagra
ach na huain ag méileach.

Thug mé grá dhuit is mé beag bídeach,
Chuir mé barr air is mé mór millteach.
Niorbh é sin an grá a thug an t-uan don chaora,
Ach grá buan daingean nach féidir a scaoileadh.

Siúd é an Domhnach a dtug mé grá dhuit,
An Domhnach díreach roimh Dhomhnach Cásca.
Is tú ar do ghlúin ag léamh na Páise,
‘Sea bhí mo dhá shúil a’ síorthabhairt grá dhuit.

Ó bhain tú thoir agus bhain tú thiar díom,
Bhain tú an ghealach gheal is an ghrian díom,
Bhain tú an croí seo bhí i lár mo chléibhe díom
Is nach rí-mhór é m’fhaitíos gur bhain tú Dia díom.

English

Young Donal, if you cross the ocean,
take me with you – don’t forget!
You’ll have a keepsake on a fair-day and market,
and the daughter of a Greek king for a bed-mate.

You promised me, but you lied to me,
that you’d meet me at the sheep-fold;
I whistled and called a thousand times for you,
but all I got was
the lambs bleating.

I gave you my love when I was little,
and even more when I got bigger –
and not the love that a lamb gives its mother,
but everlasting, secure love that can’t be broken.

First time I saw you ’twas a Sunday evening
‘Twas at the Easter as I was kneeling
‘Twas on Christ’s passion that I was reading
But my mind, it was on you, and my own heart bleeding

You have taken east and west from me;
you’ve taken the moon and the sun from me;
you’ve taken the heart from within my breast;
but my greatest fear is that you’ve taken God from me.

___________________

As traditional Irish songs about love, lost love, and eternal betrayal go, this is one of the best (and the Irish are very good at heartache.) Nobody really knows who wrote the song, or the tune to which it is set, so there’s really only a guess as to when this one was penned. Most speculate that it’s a 17th century song, but it could be even older.

The song is probably known today because of the work of a late 19th and early 20th century Anglo-Irish dramatist, folklorist and theatre manager. Lady Gregory, as part of her larger effort in the Irish Literary Revival, translated the traditional tune into English and thereby distributed it to a wider audience.

So what is the song really about?

(more via oldmooresalmanac.com)

Donal Óg: What the Song Says

is an abandoned lover’s anguished lament. The speaker begs Donal Óg, Young Donal, to take her with him, recounting the impossible promises he made and broke, declaring she would do anything to stay near him, and ending in the most devastating line of all: that he has taken everything from her, including God himself.

The imagery is strange and wild and utterly Irish. He promised her gloves made from the skin of a fish. Shoes made from the skin of a bird. A ship of gold under a silver mast. Twelve towns with a market in all of them. These are not realistic promises, they are the promises men make when they want something, grand and weightless and cruel in retrospect.

The unusual syntax lends it a striking rhythm and the repetition, you promised me; you promised me, makes it easy to memorise and hard to forget.

The Woman Who Rescued It

Lady Augusta Gregory was born in Roxborough, County Galway in 1852 and is regarded as the mother of Irish folklore. George Bernard Shaw described her as the greatest living Irishwoman. Alongside W.B. Yeats and Edward Martyn, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre in 1904.

Gregory travelled the country, learning Irish, sitting with ordinary people, including residents of the Gort workhouse, and writing down what they told her. She was saving a world that was disappearing in real time.

Her translation of Donal Óg from the Gaelic preserves much of the original’s grammatical structure. It does not read like a Victorian lady rendering an ancient text safe for parlour recitation. It reads raw. It reads like fury and grief sitting side by side.

One writer has called it a sinful, sexual and blasphemous piece of beauty. And we Irish women are okay with that.

Why Donal Óg Still Matters

The song is anonymous, which means we will never know her name. We know only that a woman in Ireland, from centuries ago, felt something so strongly she turned it into verse that survived invasions, famines, and centuries of neglect.

The name Donal Óg may possibly be traced to real historical figures. Or it may be that Donal Óg is every man who ever made a promise he had no intention of keeping. The song works either way.

Old Moore’s Almanac has long understood that the Irish relationship with time is not linear. The past is not behind us, it is underfoot, in the language, in the land, in the poems we carry without always knowing why. Donal Óg is one of those poems. A woman’s voice, reaching forward across hundreds of years, still perfectly clear.

Donal Óg, translated by Lady Augusta Gregory.

It is late last night the dog was speaking of you; the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh. It is you are the lonely bird through the woods; and that you may be without a mate until you find me.

You promised me, and you said a lie to me, that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked; I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you, and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.

You promised me a thing that was hard for you, a ship of gold under a silver mast; twelve towns with a market in all of them, and a fine white court by the side of the sea.

You promised me a thing that is not possible, that you would give me gloves of the skin of a fish; that you would give me shoes of the skin of a bird; and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.

When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness, I sit down and I go through my trouble; when I see the world and do not see my boy, he that has an amber shade in his hair.

It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you; the Sunday that is last before Easter Sunday. And myself on my knees reading the Passion; and my two eyes giving love to you for ever.

My mother said to me not to be talking with you, today or tomorrow or on Sunday; it was a bad time she took for telling me that; it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.

My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe, or as the black coal that is on the smith’s forge; or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls; it is you put that darkness over my life.

You have taken the east from me, you have taken the west from me, you have taken what is before me and what is behind me; you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me, and my fear is great that you have taken God from me.

If you’re ever in the mood to sit in your feeling about lost love, or betrayal (esp. coming from someone named Donal) then I recommend giving this a listen.

I also really enjoy this somewhat more recent recording of the song. It’s newer than the 1976 cut of the song, but it feels a bit more traditional.